Larry Rosenthal

adjunct professor, public policy

Larry A. Rosenthal is a senior lecturer at the Goldman School of Public Policy. After several years of affiliation with the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement, he assumed a formal leadership role starting in the 2013-2014 academic year.
A product of the masters and doctoral programs at the Goldman School, Rosenthal served as the long-time executive director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, working closely with the late professor John Quigley.
Rosenthal was managing editor of "The Mortgage Meltdown, the Economy, and Public Policy" (2009), a special issue of The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. He was coeditor, with John Quigley, of Risking Housing and Home: Disasters, Cities, Public Policy (Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2008), a collection of symposium papers commemorating the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Earlier he coauthored, with David Kirp and John Dwyer, Our Town: Race, Housing and the Soul of Suburbia (Rutgers University Press, 1995), an award-winning social, legal and policy narrative of the historic Mt. Laurel housing rights cases in New Jersey. Rosenthal has also written a variety of articles, book chapters, and research reports.
His current research focuses on municipal fiscal distress, civic engagement and participatory budgeting, the intersection between population aging and housing needs, and land-use regulatory impacts, among other topics. At GSPP, Rosenthal has taught law and public policy, quantitative methods, introductory and advanced policy analysis, housing and the urban economy, cities and their citizens, and seminars on policy practice and public-private-nonprofit collaboration.
Originally trained as an attorney, Rosenthal served as law clerk to the late Justice Marcus M. Kaufman at the Supreme Court of California and was Gov. George Deukmejian's appointee to California's Dispute Resolution Advisory Council. He later was an associate at the San Francisco law firm ofHanson, Bridgett, and acted as statistical consultant to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in its implementation of the Civil Justice Reform Act. He has served in research and advisory capacities for such clients and funders as the MacArthur Foundation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Bay Area Governments. Rosenthal also served as policy analyst for the National Park Service's Presidio transition team, studying redeployment of the Presidio's housing stock.